Movies and television shows have long used music to enhance the audience's overall experience. The composer or arranger of the musical score, who has a full linear view of the entire story ahead of time, is able to fit the music to the current scene through experience and by working with the director. Careful post-production scoring is used to affect the audience's emotions, foreshadow danger, enliven an action scene, suggest that a character is evil or sinister (often before the character's true nature is revealed), build a sense of dread, delight, and spectacle through tension and release, anticipation and resolution and so on.
Unlike scripted content, however, the composer or arranger of the music for a videogame does not have the benefit of knowing what is going to occur next, at least not for the most part. This is because videogames are not pre-scripted static content but rather are based upon unpredictable player input. For example, an adventure game player may choose to enter into a dangerous environment or skip over it; a player of a warfare videogame may choose to enter into battle or not. As a result, contemporary videogame music reacts to user-decided events.